UT-ORNL Expert to Discuss Cyberspace Insecurity Risks, Precautions

KNOXVILLE — Stacy Prowell, UT associate professor and chief cybersecurity research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will speak about computer network security on Oct. 19 at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Prowell will focus on how and why computer networks are fundamentally insecure and how existing economic, political and social forces are likely to make things worse. He also will talk about changing strategies and motivations for exploitation, as well as what individuals can do to increase their own security.

Prowell works in ORNL’s Computational Sciences and Engineering Division and holds a joint appointment as associate professor in UT’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

For more than a decade, Prowell has worked on making software systems more reliable, safe and secure. He also has developed novel ways of specifying, analyzing and testing software applications and embedded devices. As an industry consultant, he has worked on projects ranging from tiny embedded devices to large distributed industrial control systems, from simple software applications to sophisticated medical imaging. More recently his work has focused on computationally intensive cybersecurity, combining formal analysis methods with high-performance computing.